I showed this a while back, but got some better pics of it today when I was at my Grandpa's. He found this while clearing out brush, the large nick in it, is from a sickle. The metal is most likely silver. Too hard to be lead, no rust, so it's not steel, and stainless didn't exist back then. Back then, counterfeiters would take a sheet of silver, hammer a Morgan dollar into both sides to make the dies. They would cut a circle of lead from a jar lid, then hammer the "die" into the lead on both sides. Cut reeds into the side with a knife, then plate it silver.
It isn't a die, it is a crude contemporary counterfeit. Even if you couldn't make dies, you could take pieces of metal put them between two genuine coins and smash them together with a sledge hammer giving you a two sided incuse "coin". I've seen several pieces like this and at one time I owned a lead shield nickel that had been made by this method. As for what it is made of, it could be coppernickel or it could be a pewter alloy. Silver is possible but not likely.
So now explain to us how you put enough force on it to strike a coin with one side of your "die" without ruining the image on the other side.
leather between top of 'die' and 'hammer' together struck hard evenly, as opposed to struck weakly with rising pressure once struck would at least curb the wear to the 'die'
I don't think it's a counterfeit for the simple reason the details are incuse. I do know they made morgan dollars out of lead back then, because I have had one before I found metal detecting.
